The dumbing down of cinema

I like to go out of Mumbai for months, to write my scripts. Yes, it costs more to the producer, but the value is immense. Very often in film production, one finds people who know the cost of everything and value of nothing. This is the reason why the cost of filmmaking has gone up so much and the value is at the bottom. Why is it that in India, in a given year, not more than a few films (out of several hundreds) are valuable films? Why do most films not surprise us anymore? Why are they not adventurous? Why are they so mediocre?

I think there are few factors responsible for this. 

First, the real, emerging consumers of cinema are the youth of this country. Today’s youth has grown up on modern television and social media. These have slowly, steadily and systematically uneducated the cinema public. It has changed the comprehension of cinematic imagery. It has deconstructed the language and grammar of cinema and converted a big part of the cinema audience into a ‘commercial- break’ audience. TV and social media are of fleeting images, information and low impact content. So, a whole generation that has grown up on TV entertainment, where one doesn’t have to concentrate, comprehend, interpret and imagine much, is often not ready to appreciate cinematic language. I think that's the reason why good cinema has to struggle to find an audience. So, in a way, TV and social media have contributed quite effectively to this ‘dumbing down’ process.

On the other hand, multiplexes have changed the whole dynamics of film distribution. When multiplexes came in, one thought it would open a ‘world-of-choices’ for the audience. But the people who own multiplexes are not in the film business. They are in the amusement business. And the cost of running this amusement business is very high. So high, that they cannot afford to experiment too much and doesn't have too much patience. Quick-turnover, high- volume is its DNA. With the advent of multiplexes, movies are now released on 1000-4000 screens, loaded with huge star fees and marketing budgets. So any film which is not making big money, is shown the door immediately. A film which is not star-studded needs time to find its audience. And that audience is not a first-day-first-show audience. They are slow starters. Laggards. Due to the lack of marketing blitz, these movies survive on word of mouth and favourable press. This is a slow process. But before it can find its audience, it gets gobbled up by another blockbuster, backed with huge campaigns that dominate the media noise.

These blockbusters cater to an audience seeking instant gratification. This audience often wants to consume over simplistic, fleeting, feeble content. On many occasions, I am told by the studios, producers and stars to keep the storyline very thin. In fact, only yesterday, I was told by a film-tycoon that a recent movie was successful because it had a very thin storyline. When I started my career, a star asked me to keep the plot at a minimum, so that even an idiot can understand it. The buzzword here is to make an idiot-proof movie. Therefore, what comes out is idiotic cinema. Cinema with no sense of reality, common people or history. It is cinema with no context and no content. Hence, an audience with no context and content. A film with context and content is perceived as ‘different’ or ‘experimental’ or ‘arty-sharty types'. Initially, nobody cares about it. Then it begins to sink in. It starts moving some people. It starts to create its own eco-system, but not for long. There comes another blockbuster, reinforcing the industry’s collective belief that the other kind of movies are only for film festivals. Sigh.

Now, the bunch of executives in corporatized Bollywood, who earlier worked in P&G or Levers or Nokia, close the window for these movies. And these execs are the third most important part of this ‘dumbing down’ process. Why, one may ask. Because no talented, ambitious filmmaker will do those jobs. He’d be out on the sets being part of the filmmaking process. But big corporations need a big number of executives. These people have nothing to do with cinema, but they are good with numbers. They work with numbers. They are ‘number- jugglers’. Since they often don’t know a thing other than numbers and have to deal with people who know nothing about numbers, they get nervous. These hundreds of nervous execs end up deciding what film to make. So they end up making what can be quantified. Without realising that some of the biggest blockbuster classics began with an instinct. But here, it all boils down to budgets, number of prints, star fees. Nothing wrong in it if only we add content, research, passion and value to the list. Numbers can make anyone nervous. Now, films are not made from the position of conviction, confidence or courage. They are made with fear and manipulation, all focused at the bottom-line. They are made to be idiot-proof. From the point of view of what one wants to hear and not what one wants to say. That’s why there is no bravery, no adventure and no surprises in most of the recent movies. Don’t feel bad, as it’s happening not only to cinema, look at cricket, TV or modern mainstream media. They're all becoming part of the ‘dumbing-down’ process.

The argument that the ‘audience wants it’ is most the inane, irrelevant and mediocre, in my mind. I don’t believe that the audience needs to be titillated and fed with sensationalism. I don’t believe that a film is for weekend consumption only. I think intelligence and quality needs to be pushed back into the audience’s expectations. What should be a standard has become an exception. I believe that cinema is modern literature. I think it’s a medium through which my children are going to connect with the history and the world, for cinema shapes our worldview. Cinema touches our hearts, our lives and fills us with hope. 

In a recent movie, the heroine says it's all about "Entertainment…. Entertainment… Entertainment…" This dialogue found resonance amongst people responsible for the ‘dumbing down’ process. Very often, producers use this dialogue to reinforce their line of argument. My answer to them is simple – if cinema was just entertainment, then it’s no different from a circus. 

The author is a film-maker, writer and travel junkie. He tweets at @vivekagnihotri